Hate Mail Urges Autistic Boy be 'Euthanized'

Canadian police are investigating an anonymous letter allegedly written by a neighbor that called a 13-year-old autistic boy "a hindrance to everyone" and told his grandmother to "do the right thing" and "move or euthanize him."

The one-page, typed letter was slipped under Brenda Millson's door Friday at her home in Newscastle, Ontario, about 50 miles east of Toronto, CityNews reported. Her grandson Maxwell Begley, who lives with his parents in Oshawa, stays with her in the mornings during the summer.

The poison-pen letter complains about "whaling" noises the boy makes outside. "It scares the hell out of my normal children!!!!!!! When you feel your idiot kid needs fresh air, take him to our park you dope!!!" reads the letter, which uses exclamation points liberally.

It goes on to attack the boy as "retarded" and dismisses his value as a human being.

"Personally, they should take whatever non retarded body parts he possesses and donate it to science. What the hell else good is he to anyone!!!"

"What right do you have to do this to hard working people!!!!!!! I HATE people like you who believe, just because you have a special needs kid, you are entitled to special treatment!!!"

"Go live in a trailer in the woods or something with your wild animal kid!!!"

The letter-writer signs off as "One pissed off mother!!!!!"

Millson was shocked.

"I was shaking when I was reading it," she told CityNews. "It's awful words. You don't know why somebody would ever do such a thing."

Max's mother, Karla Begley, who has multiple sclerosis, told the Toronto Star she started hyperventilating when she read the letter and had to be held by her husband.

"It made me sick to my stomach to think that somebody hated my son that much and they didn't even know him," she said. "But they just hated him because he was different. That's the only reason they had to hate him."

She said Max "does make noises, they're usually happy noises. I call it his meditation, he needs an hour of that."

Although the hate mailer claimed to speak for others in the community who "don't have the guts to tell you," dozens of Millson's neighbors cheered when Max came outside Sunday after a TV crew arrived, and he did "his little happy dance," Begley said.

Durham Regional Police are "taking it very seriously" and investigating whether any laws were broken, said spokesperson Jodi MacLean.